Bankruptcy & Foreclosures

Ever receive one of those tantalizing credit card offers in the mail that promises a much lower rate than the card that currently holds your balance? You read through the fine print and find out that they will allow you to transfer your current balance and that the lower rate promised isn’t just some introductory offer. The only catch is that this card slaps you with an annual fee to be a member.

In the past I’ve often steered people away from participating in such offers on account of the tried and true logic that you shouldn’t have to pay to be a member of any credit card offer- after all, you pay them enough as it is through interest right? Not so fast. In this day and age of interest rates that can sometimes reach as high as 28%, it may actually be in some consumer’s best interest to consider dropping a few dollars on an annual fee in effort to slash away interest points. This is especially true for consumers who regularly maintain a balance on their cards (where they are actually paying interest on their balance on a monthly basis).

The trick to understanding if you are that type of consumer has been made a lot easier of late as there are online calculators that do the computation for you. By simply punching in your data, the calculator determines for you whether a lower rate would be worth paying the annual fee over.

Remember that such tools are readily available for everyone to use on the internet. The first step to successful debt management is often remembering to use such free resources to your advantage. I have found using the rate/ annual fee calculator that AOL offers in their Money & Finance page intuitive and with great results. It can be aceessed directly by clicking here.